Quote: Haydock or Scofield?

Haydock or Scofield?

Now, in the Haydock Bible, the sources of comments are marked, you are likely to often see Calmet cited or some of the older Catholic bishops serving persecuted English Catholics, like Witham and Challoner, but this comment is actually by Haydock himself:

Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. (Haydock)

To be clear, Haydock was the Catholic, the nephew several generations removed of the Deformation era martyr, he published his Bible comment or Study Bible starting with 1811. Scofield was Protestant, his copy was from 1909 and second edition 1917. And the Scofield Bible contains this item, from Genesis 1, lacking in Haydock:

The use of "evening" and "morning" may be held to limit "day" to the solar day; but the frequent parabolic use of natural phenomena may warrant the conclusion that each creative "day" was a period of time marked off by a beginning and ending.

So, Haydock, the Catholic, was strictly Young Earth, both as to creation days up to creation of Adam and as to (especially as in the quote above) the time from Adam on.

Scofield, the Protestant, was promoting at least acceptance of both Gap theory and Day Age, i e Old Earth. However, as to the history of mankind, the comments to Genesis 5 and 11 do not show any callousness about Biblical chronology from Adam on, however, also no special solicitousness about it, unlike how the Haydock quote makes a short chronology (literal Masoretic to literal LXX) for Genesis 5 and 11, and probably also a short Soujourn, vital for the correct preservation of the Genesis 3 narrative.